


The Feeding

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Death, Doctor Who AU, F/M, Romance, Vampires, alternate Series 9, canon compliant AU, discussion of sacrificing a life, some minor blood and gore, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: An AU that diverges Series 9 after the events of The Zygon Invasion. Clara begins spending the days when she isn't travelling with the Doctor taking on UNIT "cold case" mysteries. When one involves a vampire, Clara realizes she's over her head; and when it all goes wrong, she's faced with a life changed forever, and the question of how the Doctor - the man that stops the monsters - will react when he learns his best friend is now, technically, a monster.





	The Feeding

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU story set after the events of The Zygon Invasion. Everything up to that point is as you know it (except that in this AU, the minisode Last Night and the episode The Name of the Doctor were the final farewells for River Song). And then this story takes things in a new direction.
> 
> As usual I have thrown in some obscure references. See the end notes for some explanations.
> 
> Many thanks to Universe on Her Shoulders for performing the beta read on this story.

When Clara Oswald was a little girl, she made a big mistake that left her scarred for life. Literally.

It was simple childhood ignorance, nothing more. But the ladybird that had landed softly on her five-year-old forearm had looked so pretty and the late-spring sun was shining so brightly in the garden, she just had to get a closer look. So, being very careful not to disturb the bug, lest it take flight, she’d retrieved an old magnifying glass her gran used for examining butterflies.

Back in the sunlight again, Clara held the magnifying glass over her arm to take a look at the insect.

The ladybird knew that danger lurked. Not from the big, curious eyes of the human that gazed down upon her, but from the big yellow orb that filled the sky with light behind her. She’d felt the heat rise rapidly on her back and, as the poem goes, had flown away home. Clara, meanwhile, was left screaming as the sunlight, magnified and focused by the lens like a poor man’s laser beam, burned a small, but tightly defined hole in her arm. At the time, it felt like she was going to burst into flames.

Nearly a quarter century later, so much had changed in Clara Oswald’s life. She’d been to far-off worlds and saved many of them, loved and lost, and was now the companion—a word she cherished, even if he refused to utter it—of a powerful and passionate Time Lord. 

Through all of this, the tiny scar on her forearm remained in place. A reminder of how a simple mistake can have permanent consequences.

Now, thirty-year-old Clara Oswald screamed as sunlight, pouring through a window in her flat, scorched her arm—the same arm with the scar, in fact—and she wondered if this time she really would catch on fire.

Would it be a mercy?

***

_Earlier_

Clara had made a promise to herself never to blame the Doctor if something went wrong during their travels. And this extended to what she did in her own time, too. He’d inspired in her a thirst for adventure that became so strong, she’d found herself unable to wait until their weekly “date” (her word, which she enjoyed invoking in the Doctor’s presence whenever she felt a desire to see him blush and stammer) to scratch that itch.

For years now, each Wednesday afternoon, she’d dismiss her students at Coal Hill School and find him — first all gangly and bow-tied, later all eyebrows and grey curls — waiting in a storage cupboard next to, or just inside, his wonderful time-travelling box, the TARDIS. Or sometimes they’d meet at her flat, which felt more intimate though, she had to admit she enjoyed the clandestine aspect of meeting on the sly at school. The rumours of her carrying on an affair with John Smith, Coal Hill’s eccentric substitute caretaker, were annoying at first, but she ultimately found them more of an amusement.

The Doctor had said he wanted to see her more frequently; in fact, he often broached the subject of her travelling with him full-time, but this had become their thing. Something to look forward to. Wednesdays were _their_ day. 

Of course, depending on the crisis—or there simply being too many cool places to explore—sometimes “their day” stretched into multiple days, weeks or even months, though she’d usually return to class on time for Thursday morning, her students little the wiser. It played hell with calculating her birthday, though. Technically (barring a few “previews” he’d had on his end because of time travel), she and the Doctor first met in early 2013 when she was twenty-four. Now it was 2016, but she was thirty. She could totally identify with the Doctor’s inability to remember his exact age. For all he knew, he could be billions of years old.

So Wednesdays were their “day,” but there were six other days in the week, after all. The Doctor had taught her the importance of helping people, of never walking away from a problem. That’s why she’d started to seek out adventures on her own. 

In retrospect, she knew reading Black Archive files was an abuse of the rare privilege of access that the Doctor had bestowed upon her at UNIT. Kate Stewart, current head of the organisation and daughter of its founder, confided in her once that Clara was the first companion to be given top-level UNIT security clearance, and not even iconic associates like Sarah Jane Smith, nor Josephine Grant who preceded her—and Jo was a UNIT agent—had access to (or, at least, were allowed to keep their memories of) the Black Archive.

For nearly a year (relative Earth time), Clara engaged in her clandestine work on weekends and evenings, sifting through what amounted to UNIT’s “cold case” files—mysteries their agents either couldn’t solve or were not considered high-priority enough to devote resources to—in hopes of finding a mystery she could help solve on her own. 

Many cases were simply too cold to resurrect. Some were outright cranks. At times, Clara thought she was wasting her efforts and considered opening up a freelance detective agency instead. 

But a few were the real deal—like the Graske that kept robbing people at the Harry Potter Studio Tour (he’d been dismissed as someone cosplaying as a Gringotts goblin); or the live, and very dangerous, Dalek weapon that had turned up in the private collection of a reclusive baron who just _had_ to one-up his rival, Henry van Statten (ignoring the fact van Statten had been missing for the last four years and a Dalek was rumoured to have been involved in his disappearance). 

Most of these cases Clara uncovered weren’t anything she couldn’t handle (with or without a bit of under-the-counter back-up from Kate’s right-hand, Osgood). In fact, sometimes they left her thinking she was the star of a low-budget spinoff. But it was enough to take the edge off what she had long realized as an addiction to the danger and the excitement of being an adventurer. 

At least once a week, she asked herself why she didn’t just pack in the textbooks and lesson plans and devote her life to adventure. She never could come up with an answer that satisfied her.

***

So this is how one Tuesday evening Clara Oswald found herself alone, without back-up, without the Doctor, squaring off against a vampire who had spent the last fifty years managing a bed and breakfast—tourists would go to bed, he’d have breakfast—just outside Central London.

A note scribbled on the Black Archive file had expressed the general opinion of the top brass regarding what, admittedly, sounded like the set-up for a bad horror movie:

“ _Let TW deal._ ”

TW stood for Torchwood, often considered UNIT’s poor cousin. By UNIT, that is. Or, at least, by UNIT once it had actually been made aware of Torchwood’s existence, which had taken an embarrassingly long time given the rival agency was created by Queen Victoria in the 19th century, decades before UNIT was established. All that was beside the point; the point was “TW” had apparently never received this particular file, hence its continued residency within UNIT’s Black Archive. 

Little comfort for the families of the people who reportedly came back from the bed and breakfast changed—or didn’t come back at all. “Rough part of town,” was the only thing the police had to say about it.

She should have called the Doctor right away. But, of course, she didn’t. She was The Impossible Girl. She could do anything. Asking for help? _Pfft_. That was for amateurs. She had stared down Daleks, Missy, Derren Brown … a middle-aged, overweight vampire with a comb over who looked like a third-tier guest star on _Are You Being Served?_ … he’d be a piece of cake.

Unfortunately for Clara, he was a piece of cake with the ability to move invisibly and silently, and that’s how he got the drop on her when she was searching his office for evidence. She’d booked a night at the bed and breakfast and had waited until the proprietor had gone out for the evening (or, rather, she _thought_ he’d left). 

At first, bizarrely, she’d thought it was the Doctor approaching as she felt her skin tingle the same way it did on those occasions where he’d hug her from behind. The first time he did it, he’d claimed it was an accident (“Time Lords do trip occasionally, Clara, and you were conveniently situated,” he’d protested); by the second time, he’d determined that this was how humans hugged now, after Clara had done the same to him after they reunited following an adventure he’d had on his own with Ashildr. 

Clara had then smiled at that memory and closed her eyes, swaying slightly. She suddenly felt so damn good… 

The vampire’s teeth entered the smooth skin where her neck met her right shoulder so quickly, it took a moment for her brain to even register she’d been attacked. The next thought her brain processed was a piece of trivia she’d read somewhere that vampire teeth secreted an anaesthetic that rendered the blood extraction process virtually painless. 

The next thought after that, before her brain shut off altogether, was how admirably humane that was.

***

When Clara had come back to awareness hours later, she’d felt numb. And cold. But also oddly peaceful. Calmer than she should have been under the circumstances. She’d dully pulled herself off the floor and looked around, and it was immediately evident that the guy had done a runner and, it seemed, had taken most of his office with him.

But at that moment, finding evidence of a vampire running a B&B had become a very low priority for Clara. She needed to take a look at herself, because she didn’t feel right, at all. She pulled out her phone and activated the selfie camera.

After a quick burst of relief that she could even _see_ herself (or was it just mirrors that didn’t work with vampires?), the first thing Clara noticed was how pale she looked; the last time she’d seen her own face, she was still rocking the tan she’d picked up during a trip to Tahiti with the Doctor (sparking a round of “rich boyfriend” rumours at the school, of course). Now she looked almost like a ghost and even the brown of her large eyes appeared less vivid.

She knew she’d see two teeth marks on her neck before she even looked, and there they were. To the unpractised eye, they resembled little more than blemishes—the remnants of a couple of errant blackheads, maybe, or an insect bite. 

Now faced with the realization that she had been bitten by a vampire, part of her wanted to scream, to shout, to cry, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. The Doctor had trained her to approach each situation dispassionately. Retreat to her mental storm room. Think. 

“OK, Clara Oswald, it could be worse,” she spoke aloud. “You’re standing upright and you’re alive…” She frowned. “You _are_ alive, right?” She quickly clasped her left wrist with her right hand and squeezed. She frowned again and shifted her grip. “I know how to take a pulse properly,” she announced to the empty room, as if answering a silent accusation.

Then she unbuttoned the first few buttons of her blouse and placed her hand directly on her left chest. Still nothing.

Experimentally, she inhaled and then held her breath. The last time she’d done this, in Victorian London soon after the Doctor had last changed, she’d managed to hold it for about two minutes before her vision began to blur and flash random colours and she’d passed out. This time, after five minutes had elapsed, she noticed no change. When she released the air, there was no sense of relief. The air just kind of… exited. And she felt no urge to breathe in again.

She found a fork in a drawer. She jabbed it into the back of her hand, leaving behind a quartet of tine marks, no blood, and she hadn’t felt a thing.

No heartbeat. No breath. No pain.

***  
_Here stands Clara Oswald. R.I.P._

***

Clara walked the five miles from the vampire’s now-abandoned abode to her own flat in a daze, not wanting to have to deal with people on the Tube as her mind raced. 

Who could she tell? Dad and Gran? Hell, they don’t even know about the Doctor being a near-immortal Time Lord. They just thought he was her “special friend,” as Linda, her stepmother, once called him to his face, with each inverted comma carrying an unsavoury undertone. It had gone over the Doctor’s head, but had left Clara contemplating murder. Dave had tried the, “Honey, we need to have a talk” routine with her, but she’d shut him down. Was there really any chance of them being able to process the idea of Clara being undead, and quite possibly a vampire? 

One thing for certain, she thought as she approached her residential estate; she couldn’t tell the Doctor. She mustn’t. It wasn’t just a matter of pride or worrying that he might blow up at her for going after a monster on her ow… her internal monologue stalled at that moment as it was replaced by the horrid realization that _she_ was, technically, now, herself, a monster. 

It would hurt him that he wasn’t able to protect her, to exercise his “duty of care.” With her now being a monster … how would he react? Would he still be able to feel the same way about her?

Clara climbed the ten flights to her floor, noticing how winded she did _not_ get, and fumbled with her keys as Hussein, the young boy from the flat next door, chose that moment to peek his head out from his door.

“Hi, Clara,” he said brightly.

“Uh, hi, Hussein,” Clara replied back, quietly.

“Are you OK? You sounded a little stumbly coming down the hallway.”

Clara stopped rummaging for her keys that had stubbornly slipped to the bottom of her bag. “Yes, I’m fine.” It came out testier than she’d intended. “Drank a little too much at the pub, is all.”

“Are you su-”

“ _I said I’m fine!_ ” She glared at him.

“Sorry, I was just asking,” Hussein said, backpedalling. “There’s something wrong with your teeth, by the way.” With that, he skulked away.

Teeth? Oh, god not that, too, Clara thought as she retrieved her keys, opened the door and made a beeline for her bathroom mirror. 

She arrived just in time to see two sharp-pointed incisors retreat into her upper plate, like cat’s claws after a scratch.

***

Clara spent much of the night huddled on her couch, hugging her knees in a foetal position. After pulling herself away from the mirror, she’d stumbled into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine, which she’d immediately vomited up. “I never drink _vine_ ,” she recalled hearing in a vampire movie long ago.

Water, fizzy drinks, orange juice—same response, and her kitchen sink was left looking like a war zone. But she wasn’t really thirsty, anyway—she was _hungry_. So very hungry.

Her refrigerator held few options—she hadn’t been eating at home much lately, so the larder was low—and Clara knew if she’d tried to eat any of the leftover salad she had, or anything else, it would just join the wine and other drinks plugging the drain.

It wasn’t that type of hunger. She knew what she needed. She knew what she craved. 

No, she thought. Be damned if she was going to do _that_. No. She’d starve first. Vampires can starve to death, can’t they?

An advert for an American series called _iZombie_ came on the TV, which she’d set to a random channel for distraction, hoping the channel she chose didn’t have a _True Blood_ marathon scheduled. 

_iZombie_ was about a young woman who’d been bitten by a zombie and became one herself, but kept her monster-ish instincts in check by getting a job at a morgue and eating the brains of already-dead people, with the added bonus of gaining insights that helped her solve the mysteries behind their deaths.

That’s it, Clara thought. I’ll get a job at a blood bank, nip off for a pint at lunch now and then. Solve a few crimes along the way. Wouldn’t be so bad, right?

Unfortunately, she discovered, easier said than done. The only related jobs she could find online called for experienced phlebotomists, and she was pretty certain she hadn’t covered phlebotomy at university. She mused that _he_ probably was an expert. _He_ was an expert in everything, it seemed.

I suppose I could always open a bed and breakfast, she reasoned. For some reason, that thought did not seem funny.

Clara suddenly found herself sliding a window open and sticking her head out into the cool London breeze as another sudden, this time almost overpowering, urge to feed came over her. I better not grow wings, she thought. Looking down into the parking lot below, she saw Hussein playing with his telescope, aiming it at the moon. 

It would be so easy. She wouldn’t have to kill him; just feed enough to take the edge off. Why not? He’d probably just pass it off as a touch of the flu. He’d get the day off school and spend his time binging Netflix shows his parents would never let him watch if they weren’t both at work. He’d have a blast. She could sneak up on him while he was examining the moon and … 

“No!” she called out and quickly withdrew from the window as Hussein (and a few other neighbours) looked around to find the source of the cry from above. 

No, I’m not doing that, Clara thought. Unacceptable. He’s a _kid_. 

She forced herself to pull her attention away from the would-be handy blood supply. Then she realized she could hear other neighbours, though the walls. Normally, that wasn’t too unusual—the price paid for living in a flat with a hundred or so other people meant you often got to vicariously share the fights and other (ahem) activities that occurred on the other side of the wall. But this time, all she could hear were heartbeats. So many heartbeats. All beckoning. All seductive. It would be so easy.

“No!” Clara put her hands over her ears, trying to drown out the cacophony. “Please, stop…” she cried.

Desperate for distraction, her eyes rested upon the bookshelf where she kept souvenirs from her travels with the Doctor. There was the Bodyswap ticket from the weird day she and the Doctor had attended the BBC Proms and ended up part of the show. And there was the badge she’d worn when she’d helped Porridge, a.k.a. the disguised Emperor Longstaff XLI, defend a group of ragtag soldiers against some Cybermen. A selfie she and the Doctor took on the planet with the two-century-long New Year’s celebration (she’d even managed to coax a laugh out of him thanks to discovering he was ticklish). 

Also on the shelf was a small frame that, at first glance, appeared to be just a bit of fluff trapped between two pieces of glass. Closer examination revealed the fluff was actually three locks of hair, side by side. Absolutely meaningless to anyone else, to Clara the brown, black and grey hairs represented the three (OK, technically two) men who meant more to her than anyone else; Danny and the Doctor. 

Her gaze rested on a piece of paper of more recent vintage.

_You are cordially invited to the 45th annual UNIT Barbecue._

“Barbecue,” Clara mumbled, absently. And then her eyes lit up. “Barbecue!” She took out her phone, called up Google on the browser, and prayed that somewhere in her part of London a butcher shop was open late. 

***

Twenty minutes later, Clara was living a vegetarian’s nightmare, leaning over her kitchen sink, sucking dully on a piece of raw steak. Her original plan to run it through the food processor had been overridden by the fact that it had taken all her willpower to stop herself from ripping open the wrapper in the shop. She’d forced herself to wait until she got back to the privacy of her flat. 

She wasn’t interested in the meat at all, of course; it was the blood contained within. After some initial disgust, she found herself calming down and feeling less hungry as she ingested the fluid. She couldn’t hear her neighbours’ heartbeats anymore, either. 

Clara was under no illusion that extracting well-processed cow blood from raw steak was probably not a proper substitute for whole human blood fresh off the vein. But, for the first time since being bitten, she felt relief as she realized she’d found a workaround that at least lessened the chances of her spouting fangs and draining the neighbours.

As she cleaned up, she tried not to speculate how long this respite would last. Instead, she had another concern to add to her many worries as she glanced at the clock and noticed it was now past midnight. 

Which meant it was now Wednesday. 

Her day with the Doctor.

***

Calling in sick to school was a no-brainer, especially after she’d taken another look in the mirror after spending the rest of the night sleeplessly watching random shows on Netflix (would she ever sleep again, she wondered). Clara examined herself in the mirror again and saw she was even paler than before, and for the first time she noticed a few grey hairs visible above her brow—although she conceded they _might_ have predated her vampiric misadventure.

Fortunately, her last few outings with the Doctor had been relatively sedate affairs, meaning she hadn’t had to book a day off to recover for a while. Which meant less suspicion at school if she did so now, and no docking of pay, which she needed more than ever given the price of steak.

Clara entered her living room from the hall. Streams of intense sunlight played across the carpet from the open window.

She stopped short before walking in front of the light. Oh, yeah, she thought. The sun. Praying that this part of the vampire legend was myth, Clara experimentally stuck her bare left forearm into the lightstream. She felt the warmth on her skin; pleasant, welcoming, soothing.

And then she let out a scream as the warmth turned to searing pain.

***

_Now_

An angry red rash covered her forearm, like the mother of all sunburns, as she hugged it to her side. Ironically, the new injury had obliterated the burn she’d inflicted on herself when she was a child. Some things never change, Clara mused.

But this time she’d burned herself intentionally. She had to know, and now she knew. There was another test to perform, one Clara desperately hoped would work, lest she find herself condemned to dark rooms and the night shift for the rest of her existence.

She shouldered on her blouse and then a hoodie she’d borrowed from the Doctor (she winced as the tight sleeve passed over her still-stinging forearm). She left her dark tights and tartan skirt as-is and put on a pair of white socks before slipping a pair of trainers onto her feet. 

Once hoodied up, Clara was now covered from tip to toe, from the back anyway; from the front, her face was still exposed. She gritted her teeth, turned her back towards the window, and stepped into the light. She half-expected/half-hoped to burst into flames, but while she did feel more warmth on her back than she usually felt from the sun, it wasn’t unbearable. And there was no pain.

Good, she thought. I can do this. Just so long as I spend the rest of my days keeping my back to the sun, everything will be groovy.

***

That afternoon, right on schedule, a familiar trumpeting, groaning sound filled Clara’s flat. She felt a mixture of relief and dread. How would the Doctor react when she told him? _Would she tell him?_ Like a light switch flipping off and on, the answer to that question—Yes/ No—had kept alternating all day.

The moment the TARDIS appeared in its accustomed place in her living room, the ship’s doors swung inwards and the Doctor, all wild grey hair and eyebrows, emerged with an ear-to-ear grin that reminded Clara of the Joker; two parts creepy, two parts sexy, the rest of the parts indefinable. 

Before she knew it, her legs left the floor as the Doctor’s lanky frame embraced her in a big spinny hug. Ever since he’d discovered it during their visit to Ashildr’s Viking village months earlier, this had threatened to become their standard greeting. It didn’t seem to matter if the Doctor had been away from her for a few days or a few years (from his perspective), he reacted like he hadn’t seen her in centuries. The first few times, it had annoyed her (and left her ribs sore on one occasion when he overdid it a bit). But then she began to enjoy it, too. Even now, in her current state of mind and body, she found herself laughing and resting her head on his shoulder as she enjoyed the ride.

“ _Aaaaah!_ My Clara! I’ve missed you,” the Doctor exclaimed as the hug spun down to an ungainly halt. Clara gave the Doctor a slightly dizzy look and a crooked smile—not intended literally, it had just become her thing when he spinny-hugged her. 

But then Clara broke the routine, quickly putting her hand against his left cheek and gently pulling his face towards her so she could plant a kiss on the other.

“Why did you do that?” the Doctor asked, putting his hand up to where her lips had touched his face, slightly confused. 

“Because I wanted to and because I’m happy to see you,” Clara said, realizing too late that her voice sounded a bit croaky. Too late, because the Doctor had noticed. 

“Are you all right, Clara? I was concerned that you weren’t at the school.” Oh no, Clara, thought, he’s reaching for his sonic glasses.

“I’m fine, Doctor,” she said, touching his arm and smiling, stopping him from retrieving the hardware from his jacket. “I took a personal day, that’s all. So, where are you taking me in our chariot of mystery?” She swiftly led the way back into the TARDIS. Stealing a glance over her shoulder as she crossed the threshold, she was relieved to see the Doctor’s nose was still pleasantly naked, unadorned by any sonic spectacles.

“It’s a surprise.”

“Uh, Doctor, last time you said ‘surprise,’ I ended up in a dungeon …”

“Bu-”

“With a robot…”

“Well-”

“…that wanted to mate with me.”

“Now, hang on. You had a head cold at the time. Are you sure he didn’t just want ‘a mate’? I ran into that misunderstanding once with Donna…”

“Do ‘mates’ spend a half hour offering to demonstrate how they’re anatomically correct in _every_ way?”

“Have you been to the UNIT Christmas Party?”

“Ha ha. I don’t mind spoilers. Spill.”

“OK, but first…” The Doctor nodded towards the dematerialization lever. Clara grinned and threw the switch, sending the TARDIS into the vortex.

It was about two sentences into the Doctor explaining how he was taking her to the Planet of Perpetual Rainbows when Clara realized that she had forgotten to bring something important. In her refrigerator, inside a sealed plastic bag. This trip might be over in a few hours, in which case hopefully no harm, no foul. But this trip might just as easily be over in a few _weeks_ , too. Would she be able to ring up a butcher’s on the opposite side of the cosmos?

“Oh, god,” Clara said. 

The Doctor was engaged in describing the planet and misread her exclamation. “Exciting, isn’t it? I know you’ll love it.”

“Sorry, Doctor, I need you to take me back home. Just for a minute. Right away. I … forgot something.”

The Doctor frowned. “Now, Clara, you know you want for nothing here. Everything you possibly need is either in storage or can be printed out.”

“But it’s, you know…” She hated lying to him; technically, though, she reasoned, she wasn’t being untruthful. She was just hoping he’d misunderstand again and think she meant something else. She twirled a finger in the air to illustrate her point; doing so indicated absolutely nothing, but she hoped the Doctor would extrapolate his own meaning.

“What? Oh, that,” the Doctor said. Clara nodded with a smile. “I know you get peckish from time to time. It’s natural for someone of your age.” Clara’s smile vanished. “I took the liberty of programming the food machine with your requests from last time,” he added.

“Doctor, I don’t get …” Oh, what’s the use, she thought. The TARDIS was capable of replicating foods of all types, infused with all the necessary DNA needed to nourish and keep a person healthy indefinitely. Maybe she could replicate blood?

This was the moment when coming clean might have saved a lot of time; Clara was acutely aware of this. Her mind raced through the possibilities; she wasn’t quite as skilled as her Doctor in the whole “mental storm room” thing, but she managed to run through a few options before the Doctor piped up with, “Gallifrey to Clara. Come in, Clara.”

“What?” she started. “Sorry, just … a bit preoccupied.”

“Is there anything I can do? You’re starting to concern me,” the Doctor said, noticeably leaning his body in her direction.

Oh no, Clara thought. Now he’s going into his duty of care mode. I don’t need that. Not now.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just … it’s been a hard week at work. Glad to be away from it.”

“You know, Clara, this _is_ a time machine. I could take you on a year’s sabbatical holiday and Coal Hill would be none the wiser.”

“I’d love that, but right now a night out on the universe is all I need.”

“All right then,” the Doctor said. “Your rainbows await, my lady.”

The TARDIS, as if on cue, uttered its customary _thump_ as it arrived on the Planet of Perpetual Rainbows. The Doctor ran to the doors and pulled them open with a flourish that would have been the envy of the members of the Magic Circle, and the end of a rainbow peeked between the doors.

The Doctor turned, frowning as he saw that, while his back was turned, Clara had suddenly hoodied up and donned a pair of sunglasses. “Clara?”

“Sorry, just chilly,” she lied, covering the fact she was terrified. Would she burst into flames the moment she exited the TARDIS? No, she thought; you tested this. Clothes form a barrier. Just keep your back to the sun … oh god—how many suns does a place called the Planet of Perpetual Rainbows have? I never asked…

To her relief, the Planet of Perpetual Rainbows appeared to have only a single sun that peeked through a thin layer of cloud that did little to block the sunlight itself, but produced a mist that permeated the atmosphere; the resulting prism effect filled the sky with brilliant rainbows.

Behind her sunglasses, Clara began to tear up. “It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, looking in every direction—except, of course, directly towards the sun; even with the cloud cover, she could feel its ominous warmth on her back through the fabric of the hoodie and the blouse layered underneath. “So beautiful.”

She felt a pair of strong arms encircle her from behind. The Doctor rested his chin on her shoulder. “This was one of the first places I ever visited in a TARDIS, long before I stole mine,” he said. “I was with … someone special. And this was a very special memory.”

Clara turned to the Doctor and smiled wryly. “‘Someone special?’”

“My first wife. We weren’t married yet when we came here. Her parents were very upset that we’d run away, but she was from a different house than mine, and so neither her folks nor mine approved. I’d read about this place at the academy, so we borrowed her father’s TARDIS and came here.”

“You stole your girlfriend’s dad’s car.”

“ _Borrowed._ Things …” The Doctor’s face darkened and he removed himself from the embrace, “… things didn’t go well after that. We still married. Had children. A granddaughter. We had a long life together.”

Clara took the Doctor’s hand. He seemed to be troubled telling her this. “But...”

“It wasn’t really a happy marriage. It wasn’t her fault, or even mine; we got on fine. But we were from different houses and so we were pretty much outcasts, on our own. It was difficult. After she died—it happened too fast for her to regenerate—after she died, I really had had enough of Gallifrey, so it was one of the reasons why I left. That and other things.”

“Things you’ll tell me about …”

The Doctor smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “…someday. But not today.”

She felt herself being steered in the direction of the sun, and she resisted. “Hey, let’s go this way,” she said, pulling the Doctor in the opposite direction.

“What? Oh, OK …” 

Fortunately for Clara, “this way” soon ended up taking them to a beautiful vista—a waterfall at least a kilometre tall fell into a deep canyon, creating more mist that resulted in more rainbows. They found a large, flat rock to sit on and spent a while in silence, entranced by the view. The Doctor leaned his head on Clara’s shoulder for a few moments until the two came to mutual agreement that this felt a little odd, so they switched places.

“I haven’t been back to this planet since she … left. But I wanted to share this with you. Because you remind me of her. Very much.”

“Thank you, Doctor … thanks for this,” Clara said, hugging the Doctor. “Hey, are you sure that your first wife … wasn’t one of my echoes?”

Clara and the Doctor had long ago given up trying to catalogue the many splinters of Clara that appeared throughout the Doctor’s lifetimes. One of her had steered the Doctor’s first incarnation to the TARDIS; another had been Queen Victoria herself; yet another was an actress who’d become popular on _Emmerdale_. Not all of them were exact doppelgangers of the original Clara, either.

“That might explain a few things,” the Doctor reasoned. “To be honest, I’ve never thought of looking into it. But here’s the thing … she died saving my life. And she left me a message before it happened, apparently, but the message was lost in the explosion. I never got to hear it.”

“‘Run you clever boy, and remember,’” Clara intoned.

“I’ll never know for certain.”

“I’m sorry,” Clara said, deciding to change the subject. “I love this place. Can we stay here forever?”

“It’s beautiful, but you’d get bored,” the Doctor said. “Nothing ever blows up here. There are no diabolical masterminds to do battle with. The Daleks don’t even bother with this place. There are no cinemas … you’d go spare.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’d find some way to amuse me.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

Clara laughed. “That totally came out naughtier than I intended.” But then she locked eyes with him. “No, actually, it didn’t.”

She leaned in and kissed him. It had been a long time since she’d done this—not since Danny, and not with the Doctor at all in his current form. But this was something she’d wanted to do for a long while, and the time was right; and she couldn’t be sure he’d want to kiss her if she told him what had happened with the vampire. Even though her lips felt numb, she was determined to enjoy the moment. 

The Doctor was taken by surprise—although he had pleasant memories of kissing Clara back when he was younger-looking and wore a bow-tie, he never expected she’d have wanted to do this with him now. The Doctor cupped Clara’s head in both hands and kissed her back. He gently pulled the hoodie off her head. He wanted to see her properly.

And then Clara screamed as sunlight struck her exposed neck. She quickly threw the hoodie up and hunched over, rubbing her neck. “Ow! Ow! Dammit!”

“Clara! What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” The Doctor wrapped his arms securely around Clara, who was shivering. 

She took a deep breath, even though she knew it wasn’t needed. She knew she had to tell him. Who had she been kidding? “It’s not you … I … can we go back to the TARDIS, please?”

“OK, come on.” The Doctor started to walk towards the TARDIS, but Clara refused to turn in that direction. 

“We have to walk towards the sun to get back to it?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Doctor, I can’t…” Clara kept her back to the sun. “Please, can’t you … bring the TARDIS here instead?”

The Doctor started to get angry. “Clara, what the hell is going on?”

“Doctor … I’ll tell you, I promise I’ll tell you, but I want to be inside the TARDIS first.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been meaning to try this trick anyway…” He put two fingers up to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. A few moments later, the TARDIS glided to a halt in front of them—to Clara’s relief, as an added bonus the ship blocked the sun and cast them both in shadow. “Hey, that worked!” the Doctor said.

Clara gently pushed past him and entered the TARDIS. Once at the console, she pulled the hood back, revealing her head and her neck.

“Let me see,” the Doctor said as he gently pulled the hoodie back further. Clara resisted. “Clara, I need to see. Please, can you take this off?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Clara took the hoodie off, revealing her thin blue blouse. The Doctor sucked in his breath as he noticed the angry red welt at the base of her neck … and then the one, even larger, on her left forearm. He also noticed how pale she was, and even the fact her hair was starting to turn grey. How did he miss that before?

“Clara, what’s happened to you?”

“Doctor, I’m terrified,” Clara said. “I’ve been trying to handle this on my own, but I need help.”

“Handle what on your own? Clara, you know I’d do anything for you.”

“I don’t think this is anything you can fix,” she said.

“Try me.”

“Doctor, give me your hand.” She took hold of his right hand. She put the fingers to her lips and kissed them. And then she placed his hand on her upper left chest, under the fabric of her blouse. “What do you feel?”

“Skin.”

“Please, I’m not in the mood for you playing Doctor Obvious right now.”

“You’re cold,” the Doctor noted. He moved his hand slightly, his fingers tracing her collarbone. “Very cold. I felt it earlier when I hugged you, but I thought it was just chilly outside. Or maybe it was me. I’m never certain about my body temperature.”

“OK, so I feel cold. What _don’t_ you feel?”

The Doctor moved his hand down slightly and applied a bit of pressure. Then he moved his hand an inch to the left. His frown became more intense. Withdrawing his hand from the blouse, he took Clara’s left arm and applied firm pressure to the inside of her wrist.

Without another word, he put on his sonic glasses and scanned her. What he saw made him stagger back against the console for a moment before he composed himself.

“You don’t need to tell me, Doctor. I know I’m dead.”

“No, you’re …”

“Undead. Even worse, right?”

“It’s not just that. If these readings are right…”

“Say hello to your friendly neighbourhood vampire.” Clara tried to smile, unsuccessfully.

“How did it happen?”

***

“You bloody idiot! You should have called me. You should never have gone there by yourself!”

Clara had seen the Doctor angry before, but rarely had the anger been directed squarely at her. And he never swore at her. Even though she understood why he’d be angry, it still didn’t sit well with her, and instinct kicked in.

“Don’t you dare go into your duty of care routine,” she retorted. “I’m not just another pudding brain. I can take care of myself, Doctor.”

“Oh yeah, you handled yourself really well, didn’t you? What were you thinking?”

She knew the Doctor’s anger was a knee-jerk reaction, but she couldn’t help herself in knee-jerking back. “How dare you even ask that,” she growled. “I wanted to help people. I did what I did because you’ve spent years teaching me how to approach situations and find solutions. ‘ _We don’t walk away._ ’ That was the very first thing you taught me, or was that just another lie?”

“Not like this. Not on your own.”

“I never expected things to go to hell the way they did. You should have seen the vampire, Doctor. He looked like Strax. He didn’t seem dangerous at all. So … yes, I made a mistake. I’m an adult and I’m willing to accept the consequences, and I know some mistakes are permanent—and I would really like some bloody support from my best friend because I’m bloody terrified right now!” Her voice broke.

The Doctor’s anger instantly vanished. He spread his arms open slightly and beckoned. It was up to Clara whether she wanted to or not. To his relief, Clara nodded and accepted the hug.

“I’m sorry, Clara.”

“It could have been you having to avoid the sun for the rest of eternity, rather than me.”

“But I’m less breakable than you.”

“Whatever. I didn’t want to tell you because … I’m a monster,” Clara’s voice dropped to a whisper.

The Doctor’s anger flared again, he pushed her out to arm’s length.

“Clara Oswald, you are _not_ a monster! I won’t have you saying that. Ever.”

“But look at me. What do you see?”

“Inhumanly large eyes that defy the laws of physics.”

“Stop kidding around. I’m a damn vampire now. And you destroy vampires.”

“Clara, I sometimes call myself Doctor Funkenstein; I don’t call myself Doctor Van Helsing.”

“What about the ones you encountered in Venice with Amy and Rory?”

The Doctor took a moment to bring those memories back from his previous life. “Those weren’t vampires, they were Saturnyns, and it was self-defence and the matriarch killed herself, I didn’t do it.”

“The Three Who Rule, then.”

The Doctor frowned. This one would be more difficult to explain, and he didn’t want to know how Clara found out about an encounter he had many centuries before when he was teeth and curls and trapped in a pocket universe for a time with Romana and Adric. “I had to destroy the King Vampire. He was a danger to the universe, enough of a threat the Time Lords even fought a war against him. I had nothing against the three humans he’d converted; it was a mercy for them to meet their end when the King died.”

“So what if I become a danger to the universe?” Clara said, her eyes piercing into the Doctor’s soul. “Will you destroy me, too? Out of mercy?”

“You are the last person in this universe I would ever kill,” the Doctor said, softly. “I’m sorry for being angry. I don’t like being angry, regardless of the eyebrows. I’m more angry at myself. I should have known.”

“Excuse me?” Clara shook off the Time Lord’s grip. “Doctor, I know you’re literally psychic, but you’re not _that_ psychic. There’s no way you could have known what I was getting up to while you were god knows where in time and space.”

“If I was here more often, I might have. Or if you travelled with me all the time, you wouldn’t have gotten into this mess alone.”

“Doctor, we’ve discussed this. We agreed that I need to keep my ties with earth. You told me how some of your past companions felt like aliens on their own homeworld after they travelled with you, how Sarah Jane took decades to find her place again. I didn’t want that to happen. You didn’t. Because nothing lasts forever.”

“Says who?” the Doctor mumbled.

“Pardon?”

Ignoring that, the Doctor ran his hands over his face. “What I’m saying is, I should have stayed on earth. With you.”

“What, like move in together?” Clara laughed, though the idea wasn’t unappealing. “Become flatmates?”

“I actually own a house in Kent,” the Doctor said, recalling Smithwood Manor, where he’d lived off-and-on during his seventh life. “We could have lived there. It would have been nice.”

“Doctor, I don’t like the fact you’ve just started to use the past tense on me.”

The Doctor started. “I’m sorry… I …” Suddenly at a loss, he left Clara’s side and went to the opposite side of the console.

Clara followed him. “Oh no you don’t, Doctor. I know this is bad, but it’s not the end of the world, is it? All I need to is to find a blood supply that doesn’t require me to go Bela Lugosi on the neighbours and I’ll be fine. And being undead has its advantages. You can finally stop worrying about me, for once.”

“What?”

“Doctor, I’m dead … I can’t die again. Unless somebody drives a stake into my heart, and the odds of a Dalek managing that trick are slim. You, me—we can be together forever, don’t you realize that? If I’m undead it means I can’t age. I can’t be hurt. I tried—stuck myself with a fork and I didn’t feel a thing. Think of all the people we can help. An immortal vampire with a heart of gold and her faithful sidekick, the Time Lord.”

“Hey.”

“What?” She smiled. “OK, I know it sounds a little bit like fanfiction, but I think it would work.”

“Fan-what?”

“Never mind.”

“Oh, my Clara. If only we could run away from this.”

The Doctor gave Clara a look that was gentle and kind, but it had the opposite of the desired effect.

“OK, you’re scaring me again, Doctor. Out with it, please.”

“Clara, how long ago were you bitten?”

“I don’t know. A couple of days?”

The Doctor shook his head. “I need you to be more specific.”

“Last night, so about twenty-four hours or so from my perspective.”

“And how many times have you fed since then?”

“Once—just using the stuff from the butcher’s like I mentioned. I felt the urge to gnaw on a neighbour … all my neighbours, actually … but I found another way. Like you would have.”

The Doctor sat down in his armchair and steepled his hands over his face for a moment. “Clara, very soon you won’t be able to resist that urge. Blood scavenged from leftovers won’t be enough. Blood bank blood won’t be enough—that has been tried and it’s only a temporary fix, just like the raw meat. You’ll need to feed from a living person, which means you’ll need to either turn them or kill them, most likely the latter since you’re still a new vampire.”

Clara felt her knees weaken. The Doctor stood up and helped her into the chair; he knelt in front of her. “Are you OK?”

Clara glared at him. “What kind of stupid question is that?” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Sorry. How long?”

“Difficult to be certain. From my understanding, most people in your … condition … turn within a few hours. For you to last a full day is … unusual. And the fact you weren’t turned into some mindless drone or killed outright is remarkable.”

Clara eyes took on a hopeful expression. “Well, I _am_ the Impossible Girl. Maybe this vampire thing doesn’t work on me the same way? I know travelling in the TARDIS has changed my DNA, too. It’s been nearly a full day, so maybe I’ll be OK?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, Clara. You’re holding on, yes, but it’s only temporary. You’re right that maybe the TARDIS influence has given you a bit of a buffer, or maybe the same sort of amazing willpower that let you hold your own against Bonnie is at play, but stronger beings than you have tried to resist vampirism. At most, you’ll only be able to hold out a day or two more, and then …”

“Will I still be me, Doctor?”

“Your drive to feed and to reproduce will override everything else. It will become your primary focus.”

“Reproduce?”

“I don’t mean that in a sexual sense, exactly, but vampires do use sensuality to get close to their victims. Part of the process of turning is you start generating a pheromone that makes you irresistible. In fact, you used it on me at the waterfall just now.”

Clara pulled back from him with a flat, “What.”

“Why do you think you suddenly decided to kiss me, and I ended up kissing you back like that?”

“Oh, I don’t know … maybe it’s because I’m in love with you and you’re in love with me and I needed comfort because I’d just been turned into a _goddamned vampire_?” Clara rose up out of the chair, seething.

“That’s the vampirism talking.”

“Doctor, I might be turning into a monster, but I would never hurt you. And drinking your blood was honestly the last thing on my mind when I snogged you. I wanted to kiss you. And there’s no way in hell that I gave you some psychic whammy to kiss me back the way you did. You wanted to kiss me. Don’t lie to me.”

The Doctor was struck speechless. He knew Clara was right. No matter what else was going to happen, all that had been real. 

“You’re right, Clara. You’re always so right. I just … I’m helpless to prevent what’s going to happen to you. And before long … what you say you feel now, it won’t be real anymore. You’ll try anything to spread vampirism—no one will be safe.”

Clara reached up and cupped the Doctor’s cheek. She looked him in the eye. There was a thought that had been residing in the back of her mind ever since she confirmed that she’d become a vampire. She forced herself to speak it aloud.

“Then I have to die, Doctor,” she said. “I mean, really die.”

“No, Clara.”

“It’s the only way to be sure.”

The Doctor pulled away from her and started madly typing on the keypad attached to the console. “No, it’s not. There has to be another way. I will not lose you. I refuse to lose you. Not now. Not ever.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to fly the TARDIS to just before you were bitten. If I have to, I’ll destroy that bastard with my own hands before he lays an incisor on you.”

“What? No, Doctor, the First Law of Time—you can’t do this. You told me yourself when I tried to save Danny, it would create a paradox that would destroy everything. And you weren’t able to override history to bypass the Fisher King’s plot back at The Drum, either.”

“I don’t care!”

“Liar! How many children might die if you do this? How many innocent people might wink out of existence if you do this? You don’t even know if it’ll work.”

“You’re right, we don’t know what will happen. It was only a few days ago, the impact on the timeline might be minimal.”

“‘ _Might be._ ’ Doctor, do you even hear yourself? If you stop this from happening, sure, everything might keep spinning normally. But what if it doesn’t? Doctor, I’m not going to be responsible for risking the destruction of the universe over some paradox. I’m not worth it.”

“You’re worth it to me.”

Clara hugged the Doctor. “If it was you facing this, I guarantee you’d be the one trying to talk me down. I’m not a Time Lord, even though I do a good job at pretending to be one, but even I know we can’t do this. You have to let me go, Doctor.”

She pulled out of the hug to see the Doctor with tears in his eyes. “You definitely remind me of my first wife,” he said with a small laugh.

Clara smiled sadly. “So … how does one kill someone who is already dead?”

***

The conversation that followed was as grim as it was brutal, and neither the Doctor nor Clara could believe they were having it. It seems ending an undead person who is willing to be ended isn’t a simple as taking down an unwilling specimen. Obviously, they both wanted it to be painless and quick, disqualifying a number of options ranging from voluntary sun exposure—Clara’s recent and historical experience vetoed that without debate—to, surprisingly, the old classic of being staked through the heart which, despite its popularity, apparently hurt like a bastard. 

Finally, the Doctor determined that exposure to the radiation from the sliver of the Eye of Harmony that resided within (and, in fact, powered) the TARDIS would do the job. It would be over for her in an instant.

“How do you feel?” the Doctor asked after the difficult conversation was finally over.

Clara was in no mood for this. “We just spent an hour deciding how to end my life, which involves me throwing myself into the portable black hole at the centre of the TARDIS. I’m not exactly in the most positive of moods right now.”

“No, I mean, do you have any urge to feed? Be honest with me.”

“No, Doctor. I feel fine. Well, fine in a relative sense. Everything feels kind of numb.”

“Good. Not the feeling-numb part; that probably means something bad. But in terms of the feeding instinct, I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me when you start to feel it, so we can … prepare. You will probably experience the heightened senses you described first.”

Clara nodded. “So what do we do until then?”

The Doctor cupped her face and kissed her on the cheek. “My Clara … we live.”

***

For the next two days, the Doctor and Clara were united in one thing—enjoying themselves as much as possible. With Clara shielded from harmful sunlight using a device the Doctor built and helpfully dubbed the Sunblock Thingy, they visited the Pleasure Prison of Delvin II, the Singing Mountains of Budcharlie, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, even Shangri-La itself. They also paid brief visits to Jane Austen as well as the Paternoster Gang in Victorian London. They even helped save a ship full of orphaned Slitheen from bouncing off the edge of the atmosphere high above Raxacoricofallapatorius—one last time saving the day. 

The Doctor and Clara Oswald, in the TARDIS.

Clara declined the Doctor’s idea of visiting her father to say goodbye, claiming she probably wouldn’t be able to go through with their plan if she saw him again. And anyway, she’d long ago arranged a cover story for Kate and Osgood to give her family should she ever be … lost. Clara saw no need to change that plan now.

Those two days bonded the Doctor and Clara together as never before, both as friends and even as lovers (though, to the latter point, Clara’s condition prevented anything further than kissing, but that was enough). Although they’d travelled together for years, the two days left them feeling as if their relationship had begun anew. And thus, both began to slide down a dangerous slope, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Clara was truly the Impossible Girl and nothing would change. Indeed, during this time, Clara never felt the urge to feed. Perhaps they would get through this together, after all.

After the two had returned from Shangri-La, the Doctor wasted no time in choosing another destination.

“I know where we can go next—you always wanted to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium,” the Doctor said as he entered a new destination into the TARDIS console.

“Doctor…”

“Ringo owes me a favour, I’m sure we can get front-row seats…”

“Doctor…” 

“And then I’ll take you to the second most-beautiful garden in-”

“I can hear your hearts beating,” Clara said, her eyes large and dark. 

The Doctor closed his eyes tight. “I’m sorry, Clara.”

“I know,” she replied. “Sure we can’t just run around to the butcher’s?” She tried a smile.

“It won’t work anymore. It’s been too long since the infection.”

“OK, so now that I find myself in the same boat as the Master with the sound of drums in my head, how long do I have?”

“Minutes. Oh, my Clara.” The Doctor took her hands in his.

“These have been the best years of my life,” Clara said. “I wouldn’t have traded them for anything.”

“I feel exactly the same,” the Doctor replied, realizing how totally inadequate those words sounded, not to mention unoriginal as he’d said that to her the first time they parted, and felt just as dissatisfied now as he did then. “What I mean is…Clara, I lo-”

“Don’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you never do. Because you know what Doctor Rule No. 1 is—The Doctor lies—and you never want that to apply to saying that. And because there have been too many. Your first wife. River. Rose. Romana. Me. But if you really feel that for me, I do want you to make me a promise.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t go after him.”

“After who?”

“You know who.”

“Clara, he has to be destroyed for what he did to you.”

“And that’s why you can’t do it. What you just said—you’d be going after that vampire for revenge, not to help people. You don’t wear revenge well, and I won’t hear of it.”

“But he’ll keep on infecting people.”

“Then let UNIT handle it. Or Torchwood. They’ll pay attention to the case once they hear about me. But don’t make it _about_ me.” Clara felt her knees buckle. The Doctor caught her. 

“The urge to feed is getting stronger, isn’t it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Like a stomach-ache, but all over my body.”

“Not much time, then.”

Clara smiled and nodded. “Time to go.” She tried to leave, to head to the access corridor she knew would lead to the near-infinitely large chamber where the Eye of Harmony resided, but the Doctor held her in place, his hands gripping her arms so tight, it would have hurt if she was still properly alive. “Doctor, we have to get to the Eye of Harmony. Before I lose control. We agreed to this. Let me go. Please.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are going nowhere.” The Doctor raised his voice, addressing the TARDIS. “Emergency Protocol Zeta.” The console room lights dimmed and Clara gaped as the exterior door vanished altogether, leaving behind a flat slate-grey wall. The access corridor into the interior also disappeared.

“Doctor, what the hell have you done?”

“Variant on siege mode. We are quite literally shut off from the entire universe.”

“Why? Why would you do this?”

“These last few days … and the years we’ve been together … I don’t want it all to end like this. It’s time to throw out the rulebook.”

“Doctor, we already talked about not breaking the Laws of Time.”

“This has nothing to do with Time. It has everything to do with us.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Doctor looked at Clara for a moment before removing his dinner jacket. He then unbuttoned the collar of his tightly starched white shirt, removing it—exposing his neck.

“No, Doctor—I will not feed on you. Not a hope in hell.”

“Clara, you’re going to have to because I have no intention of allowing you to die, and with no way out, I’m the only food supply available to you. You won’t be able to stop yourself.”

Clara looked like she was about to hit the Doctor, but she took hold of his loosened lapels instead. “Damn you, Doctor—you know I’m already de-”

The Doctor cut off that last word by kissing her. It was a kiss of desperation mixed with a heavy dose of _I-don’t-care_.

He pulled away. “You are not dead to me.” 

Clara slurred her words slightly as the feeling of hunger intensified. “I won’t be able to control myself much longer, Doctor.”

“Good. Let it go.”

“You don’t know what it might do to you.”

“I don’t think you’ll kill me. And even if you do, I’ll probably regenerate.”

“But we’ll still be imprisoned here and I’ll still be a vampire.”

“And you will keep feeding on me and I’ll keep regenerating until I find a cure for you,” the Doctor said, matter-of-factly. “I will cure you and bring you back to me.”

“It might not work.”

“I know. But it’s the only chance we have.”

Clara’s eyes shifted focus and her pupils, the Doctor noted, became fully dilated. And there were suddenly two razor-sharp fangs protruding from her upper jaw. “Doctor... run, please,” she whispered, fighting to the last. 

“Never. Feed, Clara. Let yourself go.”

The Doctor winced as Clara lunged forward and bit into his neck. The pain was momentary—possibly even psychosomatic because of the natural anaesthetic. The two fell back into the armchair, but the Doctor held Clara tight as she fed. 

He felt himself growing weaker. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. In fact, he allowed himself a nanosecond of fascination at the fact it actually felt damn good. But he knew there would be a price for this pleasure. Within a few moments, he felt his breathing begin to restrict and his free hand began to emit a golden light. He placed it gently on the back of Clara’s head. 

As the familiar haze descended across his mind, the Doctor wondered idly if Clara would survive this—the explosive regeneration energy he had tended to emit at the moment of his death ever since he took Ohila’s elixir back on Karn, triggering his transformation into the so-called Doctor of War; his changes had been violent ever since. And he had no idea if he’d come out the other side the same man or a monster, feeding alongside Clara for all eternity. 

But would that actually be a bad thing?

“Oh my,” the Doctor said as he felt himself begin to die. “I hope the eyebrows are a little less conspicuous this time…”

***

Clara woke up with an immense gasp as air filled her lungs for the first time in days. This was followed by her doubling over with a wet, hacking cough as air left her lungs for the first time in days.

“Doctor?” She’d come to while lying on the deck of the console room. She staggered to her feet and nearly fell again as blood rushed from her core to her outer extremities for the first time in days. She stopped to check her pulse.

“I’m alive?” She grinned. “I’m alive! Doctor, I don’t know what you did, but-”

She saw him lying on the other side of the armchair, his hand covering his face as he lay on his stomach. Clara all but threw herself on him. “Doctor!” She rolled him over and started back at what she saw. 

It was still him. It was still _her_ Doctor, thank god. But he was … young. His wrinkles had smoothed out. His hair was a dark auburn. His eyebrows, though still mighty and fierce, looked less-wild. It was as if he’d de-aged. Actually, no if about it.

“Doctor, please, come back to me,” Clara said. She could see the two fang-sized contusions on his neck. “Oh god, no. I’m sorry.” His breathing was shallow.

Clara’s desire for blood, to feed, had vanished. She didn’t even need to look in a mirror to know her face had returned to its natural tones, and that her hair was (hopefully) no longer turning to grey. Whatever the Doctor’s plan was—if there was a plan—it had worked. 

For her, anyway. But what about the Doctor?

“Wherever I go, you still won’t be there,” the Doctor cried out, still oblivious. 

“No, Doctor, no—I’m still here. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, you daft old man.” She took his hand in hers and put it up to her cheek. “See? I’m alive, Doctor. It worked. Whatever you did, it worked.”

The Doctor opened his eyes with a flicker. “Have I regenerated?” he asked, quickly adding: “Testing, testing, one-two-three. Huh, still Scottish, then.”

“Still Scottish,” Clara laughed. “Still you.”

“I didn’t regenerate?”

“Maybe you should see for yourself.” Clara got up and grabbed a small mirror from a table. The Doctor took a long look at his renewed face.

“Eyebrows are still rubbish. Otherwise, I look a couple millennia younger.” 

“The Clara Oswald Vampire Rejuvenation Method; I could make a mint in the late-night telesales market,” Clara laughed. To her relief, so did he. “Have you regenerated?”

The Doctor pulled himself off the floor and sat in the chair. “I think so. I can usually tell. My big toe always hurts for about a week after. My big toe feels fine, but this was far from a normal regeneration. I don’t care about that—how about you?”

Clara wrapped him in a tight hug and kissed him full on the mouth. She kept him held close as she asked. “What do you feel?”

“Warmth. And I feel your heart beating. You’re alive!”

With that he stood up and spun her around, both of them laughing. 

“What happened?” Clara asked. “Why am I alive again? And are you really you—or are you going to start drinking blood now?”

The Doctor frowned and said, “Good point,” before he ran to the console. “Full body scan,” he ordered. He threw his arms out to the side as the scanning beams moved up and down his body. “You, too,” he then said to Clara, who repeated the process.

A few moments later, the results appeared on the screen. “We’ll check you first, Clara,” the Doctor said. He examined the Gallifreyan symbols on the screen. Clara noticed they were mostly green, which was universal—or, at least, she hoped it was universal—for _Everything is OK_.

The Doctor punched the air and swept Clara up in another big hug. “My Clara—you’re cured! You’re one hundred per cent human again!” Then he spotted something on the readout. “Uh, well, except for…”

“Except for what?” Clara asked, her eyebrows raised. “Don’t keep it from me.”

“Well, you did basically undergo a full-body blood transfusion from a Time Lord so, uh …” he looked at the scanner again to be sure. He frowned for a moment, then shrugged and smiled over to her. “You might experience some side-effects. Good ones, so don’t worry.”

“What, do I get superpowers? I always wanted to be a superhero.”

“Superheroes are overrated. Tell me, Clara, what’s the average life expectancy for humans these days?”

“I dunno. About eighty-ish?”

“Let’s just say I’m pretty confident that won’t apply to you.”

Clara leaned on the console. “Doctor, are you saying I’m immortal? Like, Jack Harkness, live-forever-until-I-become-a-giant-head-in-a-jar-billions-of-years-from-now immortal?”

The Doctor checked the readings. “No—thankfully. Though I think you’d make a very appealing head in a jar. But if you play your cards right, you’ll be around for a very long time. Low triple-digits.”

“Just as long as I’m with you,” Clara said, locking eyes with the Doctor; that news would register more fully later, but first: “Your turn.”

The Doctor smiled as he looked at his readings. He kept smiling. After a couple of minutes, Clara realized the smile was of the “frozen” variety. In other words, not good.

“Doctor, what’s wrong? Tell me.”

The Doctor looked down at the console for a long moment. “OK, good news first. I’m not a vampire. I’m just a regular bloke.”

Clara breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank god. So, what’s the bad news?”

“I’m just a regular bloke.”

“You just said that.”

“No, you don’t understand, Clara. _I’m just a regular bloke_.” He looked at her meaningfully, but Clara still didn’t register his meaning. “When you were feeding on me, I began to regenerate, as I expected I might. I must have transferred some… OK, all… of my regeneration energy over to you. That’s why you survived and your vampirism got cured. I basically regenerated you within your own body.”

“Can you do that?”

“Apparently, I just did.”

“What does this mean, Doctor?”

“I’ve been de-aged, it’s true. But there’s also been a meta-crisis.”

“A what-a-crisis?”

“It’s a bit complicated. Something similar happened to me back when I wore sandshoes. A thing happened and another me was created but … _he_ wasn’t a Time Lord. He couldn’t regenerate and he had a more or less standard humanoid life span. He and Rose began a life together on an alternate earth. Far as I know, they were together until death they did eventually part.”

“Doctor, are you saying you can’t regenerate anymore?”

He swept his arms out to the side, “This was the last one. I’m Number Thirteen, or Fourteen if you count Captain Grumpy. But instead of fully changing body and mind, I just became younger. Reset the clock a bit. That’s actually the way regeneration was actually supposed to work when Rassilon set it up—it’s supposed to be a rejuvenation or renewal; the whole change-the-body-and-personality-at-random thing was actually a mutation that came later. So, what do you think?”

“I think you look amazing, but I’ve always thought that, so no change there,” Clara said. “But if you can’t regenerate…”

“It means when my time comes, my time comes.”

Clara seemed more saddened by that implication than he was. “Oh, Doctor, I’m so sorry.”

The Doctor smiled. “Don’t be. I’ve spent nearly by whole life intrigued by humans. I’ve spent millennia defending them, cherishing them, helping them, getting pissed off at them,” he then looked at Clara intensely, “loving them. This is right. I saved you. That’s what I do. And if it means I basically become human for the rest of my days, that’s not a bad trade-off.”

“But you can die now,” Clara said, tearing up.

“I could always die, Clara. Regeneration is never guaranteed. Survival after regeneration is never guaranteed. Now the pressure is off. No more worries about what might come next. This life was a bonus anyway—if it wasn’t for you, I’d have died back in that bell tower on Trenzalore. Maybe knowing I’m on the clock now, I’ll begin living my life a bit more.”

“What do you mean?”

“These last few days, which we thought were _your_ last few days? Living like that. Only for longer than a few days, of course! However much time we have left.”

Clara threw her arms around the Doctor and kissed him. Yeah, she could definitely get used to this new-old-new body of his. And best of all she knew what she had to look forward to down the line as he got older, and that wasn’t a bad thing at all.

“So, where do we begin?” she asked.

“Pretty much anywhere, but I’ve been meaning to go back to Smithwood Manor and make it a home base again.”

“‘Manor’ … sounds kind of big for one,” Clara said.

“Doesn’t have to be for one.” He looked at her, meaningfully.

“Doctor, are you asking me to move in with you?” Clara said, with a tease in her voice.

“No, actually, I think this is more a proposal.”

Clara was struck speechless for a moment. “If I say yes, does this mean I finally get to learn your name, properly?”

“Among other secrets.” 

“But we’ll still travel, right? We’re not going to spend all our nights and weekends mowing the lawn and watching Netflix, right? Kent is a bit of a commute from Coal Hill, too.”

“TARDIS Transit. More reliable than the Tube. Cheaper than an Oyster card. And I cut a deal with UNIT to take care of maintenance on the manor in exchange for my years of ‘services rendered.’ And I think our weekends will be filled with lots of adventures; after all, there’s an entire backlog of unresolved UNIT cases in the Black Archive to go through. And Ringo still owes us front-row seats for that Beatles concert.”

Clara put her arms around his neck. “Well, _Doctor Oswald_ , I think I’m going to have to say yes to your proposal.”

The renewed Doctor beamed. 

“I have a feeling thirteen is going to be my lucky number,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Smithwood Manor is the Seventh and Eighth Doctor's home on Earth, introduced in the Virgin New Adventures novel Cat's Cradle: Warhead and later also featured in both the Doctor Who Magazine and IDW comic strips.
> 
> The Saturnyns come from the Eleventh Doctor story "The Vampires of Venice"; the Three Who Rule come from the Fourth Doctor story, "State of Decay".
> 
> The reference to Clara setting up a detective agency refers to the fact that in real life Jenna Coleman was reportedly signed to appear in a detective series before having to drop out in order to star in Victoria.
> 
> I set this story in 2016 based on the dating given in In the Forest of the Night. Although Class implies Clara died in 2015, I consider this a continuity error.
> 
> The idea that the Face of Boe is Jack Harkness - hinted at in Last of the Time Lords - is supported by Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, David Tennant and John Barrowman, so I consider that canon.
> 
> Although in this continuity the events of Husbands of River Song do not happen, as that episode establishes that River marries several other individuals while technically still married to the Doctor, the idea of the Doctor marrying Clara is consistent with canon.


End file.
